Our challenge is to listen closely to what is actually being said and implied. Then we need to figure out what, if any of it, is something we want to incorporate into our way of living and working.

When we sort through the words that come at us and understand the messages they contain, we become the drivers of who we are and the paths we choose to follow.

Consider personal brand management messages like these:

The image expert says: “These are the fashions, personal grooming products, cool cars, and technology devices/apps that are the rage this year among the up-and-comers. Adopt them and you will build a personal brand that signals you’re ‘with it’ and current.”

You’re tempted to think: “I need to look younger or more chic, get the latest smart phone, dye my hair, get a new car. If I don’t, I’ll come across as un-cool or old school. If I invest in these trends, I’ll increase my chances of getting ahead.”

Your truth: What positions you to get head is your personality, your energy, your vibe. It’s in your ability to get things done, engage others, be reliable. You’re genuine, kind, and positive. You don’t need to buy a new look. Just be your best self.

Now, consider words you might hear at work:

Your boss says: “You have excellent people skills, especially when dealing with unhappy customers and working with stressed out coworkers. You have a great future here and I see you supervising others in time.”

The message heard is: You could be promoted one of these days.

You’re tempted to think: “I need to keep demonstrating my people skills, so my boss won’t change his mind about me. Getting promoted to supervisor would be an unanticipated challenge. I need to be ready for it.”

Your truth: You like working with customers and peers, and increasing the scope of your existing job would be great. But you never wanted to supervise, because the requirements of the role don’t fit your personality. It’s not the career path that feels good to you. Let your boss know that, so s/he can develop you in different directions.

Make decisions on your terms

I lived that last example. I loved being a manager but I never wanted to become an executive. I knew I was being considered and wanted to be sure my reasons were delivered in my words. So I invited the CEO to lunch to explain and my career then proceeded along the best lines for me.

You ‘re not like everyone else, so there’s no reason to believe that you should want what everyone else has. As an individual, you are wired to be unique.

The words that swirl around you are both hooks and anchors that are yours to accept or reject. Own the words that are good for you and discard the rest. That puts your next steps on your terms.

Do you have a question about supervising that you would like me to answer here? If so, please put it in a comment after this post or any that preceded it. This series will continue based on those questions, so please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks.

” How does showing respect help a supervisor minimize the damage created by prior mistakes made with their employees?” That’s the gist of the question I left you with at the end of Episode # 6.

They want to feel respected, all the time–when they do things well and when they make a mess of things.

In the workplace, employees correctly believe they have a right to be respected, particularly by those people so lovingly known as “the higher ups.”

They expect policies to respect their dignity and sense of fairness. They expect the words and actions directed toward them by their supervisors, coworkers, and senior officials to be respectful.

Aretha Franklin’s song taught a lot of people how to spell RESPECT, but not necessarily how to demonstrate it.

Earn it.

Respect is an effect of behaviors, actions, and words. We all size up intent by how and what others say to and about us and others like us. We come to interactions with our bosses or coworkers with either thick or thin skin, trust or suspicion, good or unpleasant prior experiences. It’s a human thing.

The bottom line is:

Supervisors earn the respect of their employees by showing respect in every interaction, no matter the situation.

That sounds easy enough until you factor in personalities–yours and your employees.

Here’s the struggle: Your interpersonal style at work is generally honed while you are an individual contributor, working with peers. As soon as you become the supervisor–boss man or boss woman–your status in the workplace changes. You now have authority over others.

Supervisors dole out assignments, create the working atmosphere, assess the good or poor performance of employees, recommend raises and promotions or not. Suddenly, you’re the one who can make or break the success of the people who report to you.

As the supervisor, you won’t necessarily like every one of your employees, for good reasons or indefensible ones. No one comes to work and leaves their human nature at home. But as the supervisor, you’re supposed to be aware of your impulses and control them.

Your job, then, is pretty straight-forward:

To create and sustain an atmosphere of fairness and safety where each employee can successfully complete his or her work as required.

It’s often easier said than done.

Commit to courtesy.

Earning employee respect starts with a commitment to treating every person with courtesy.

That may seem obvious but you need to look at your behavior, listen to what you’re saying or not saying to your employees, and check out your body language. One person’s tongue-in-check comment delivered with no harm intended may be heard by an employee as an inexcusable offense.

Not everyone knows what it means to be courteous or how to practice it consistently.

Good supervisors practice acknowledging their employees in positive ways–not some people but everyone. That doesn’t mean stopping at a every cubicle or job site every day, but when your path crosses with one of your employees, make it clear that you notice them with a positive word or gesture.

You often just need to smile, greet, wave, stop and chat, or lend a hand if needed. Easy enough, right? But to earn respect across the board, you need to do this with everyone–the employee you had an open disagreement with, one who always scowls at you, the employee who never looks up from his or her desk, and one who simply irritates you.

Everyone is watching how you treat people. You earn respect when you demonstrate that you value each employee in the work group a person, not just a worker.

People first.

Showing respect when trouble is afoot is a defining moment for supervisors. When you hold yourself together and honor the dignity of employees who have missed the mark, violated rules, conducted themselves unacceptably, or stepped over the line, you reach a new plateau.

We’re people first at work and then employees. Even if you have to discipline employees, withhold a raise, give a low rating, or assign an unwanted task, they will respect you if you show them respect in the process.

I love concise messages. So when offered the opportunity to read Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less by Joseph McCormack and then blog about it, I was all in. Writing a book about being brief showcases the author’s credibility from the first paragraph. McCormack’s Brief succeedsin all ways.

“That’s the way it goes,” we say when we don’t get:

Support for our ideas

An approval after our presentation

The sale

A job or promotion

There’s always reason (aka an excuse):

Bad timing

An off day

Competing factors

Favoritism or office politics

Actually, when things don’t go our way, it’s usually about us–what we say and how we say it, attached to what we do and how we do it.

If we want better outcomes, we need to master brevity.

Learn to be brief.

Your career is driven by words:

Your boss explains the need for improved processes. You present new ideas and initiatives..

Your customers express their needs. You describe how your company’s products and services can meet them.

Think about that for a second. Consider how much workplace air you fill with talk that grabs the undivided attention of others. For most of us, it’s not much.

Consider these statistics from McCormack:

People speak about 150 words per minute, yet have the approximate mental capacity to consume about five times that number, or 750 words per minute.

Unless you’ve quickly hooked your listener with compelling information or stories, s/he has lots of time to drift to other thoughts before you’ve made your point.

Think about the last time you listened to someone who captivated you with an idea or an observation–a time when you hung on every word. Do you communicate that effectively? If not, what would it take and what would your career payoffs be?

Brief gives you the insights and the tools.

Commit.

If brevity in communication were easy to do, you’d see a lot more of your coworkers doing it. If you master being brief, your career value will increase if not soar!.

McCormack writes:

To be brief doesn’t just mean being concise. Your responsibility is to balance how long it takes to convey a message well enough to cause a person to act on it.

Effective presentations are smooth. Creating them can be rough. You don’t get to the power of brevity without putting in the challenging mental work.

McCormack adds:

Brevity starts with deep expertise. Only with thorough knowledge can you accurately make a summary.

His book digs into the how to’s, providing clearly stated models and stories that remove the mystique so you can up your brevity.

He emphasizes:

To communicate effectively nowadays, you must be able to speak in headlines and grab someone’s attention right away.

Avoidance–unwillingness of colleagues to interact, collaborate, or talk with us

The reasons for being left out are many, so it helps to figure out enough so we can try to turn things around.

Generally, exclusion (temporary or permanent) may be the result of some discomfort our colleagues feel because of our:

physical appearance (size, shape, gait, dress, race)

sound (accent, tone of voice, pace of speaking)

background (ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic group)

career specialty (techie, scientist, writer, hands-on worker)

reputation (climber, flirt, trouble-maker, boaster, truth-bender)

When colleagues make us feel left out, their reasons are as much a commentary about them as us. The difference is that we’re the ones who feel the pain.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially at work, since company culture, work demands, and personalities create unique pressures.

Whether what others think about us is fair or correct isn’t the focus. It’s what we’re going to do to correct misconceptions and build positive perceptions that make us an accepted and valued part of the team.

What to do.

Once we have an inkling about the barriers to our being included, we need to shrink them.

It’s easy to be resentful and have a chip on your shoulder. When you do, it makes matters worse.

The reality is that we’re all capable of being excluders, even when while we’re being excluded. It happens when:

We don’t know how to include someone we don’t know well; our tongues get tied and our feet stuck.

No one else in the work group has yet made a move, so the ice is not yet broken for us.

We’re uncertain about how connecting will affect us one-on-one and as part of the team.

There is a fear that our overture will be rejected, misread, or misused.

Inclusion at work is an investment in a relationship. When it’s positive, everyone wins; if not, then the price can be dear. That’s why coworkers are often careful or unwilling to step forward.

Take the pledge.

Healthy, productive organizations need everyone to feel valued. Anyone who feels left out is likely to perform below par, lack motivation to grow, and experience career disappointment.

Supervisors who fail to create inclusive work groups risk escalation of unwanted behaviors that slowly poison the operation.

Each of us is responsible for contributing to a fully inclusive work environment, even when we’re feeling excluded. That’s the big challenge.

We all need to pledge that we’ll extend a hand to a coworker who may feel left out. It’s about doing simple things:

Greet him warmly when your paths cross

Invite her to join in a discussion, meeting, or event

Talk with him about his work

Share news that she might have missed

Volunteer to work with him on an assignment

Commit to kindness

If you are feeling excluded now or if you have been excluded in the past, please pledge to take these small steps. They are a path to inclusion over time that will also benefit you.

Our career success is a product of what we do and how we do it. Remember those who reached out to you along the way and please pay it forward where you work.

Somehow we’ve become surrounded by all these amazing people who do amazing work with amazing colleagues in amazing places during these amazing times.

Someone may be saying that you’re amazing too.

By definition, to be amazing means one needs to affect others with great wonder, to astonish. That means creating great surprise or marvel (yes, marvel).

That’s a tall order like a Starbuck’s Frappuccino Grande with whipped cream. Amazing or simply as ordered?

Reality or hyperbole?

What we do and how we do it characterizes our performance. Our bosses and coworkers form opinions and express them, sometimes to each other, to you, or on your performance appraisal.

The words they use might be fact-based or baseless assumptions. Sometimes people just say anything to fill in conversational space–no words of value extended.

We’re all prone to exaggerate at times, especially when we’re enthusiastic about something.

Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses exaggeration for emphasis or effect. You might use it when you:

Announce a new hire: “She’s the answer to all our fears about the new app.“

Give performance feedback: “You carried the whole group on your shoulders this year.“

Announce a promotion: “Jack out-maneuvers any crisis.”

Hyperbole only has effect when it has context. Saying, “We hired Mary who is amazing and promoted Jack who is also amazing and have you to thank for your amazing performance,” leaves us with no real information about them.

Word power

We need the right words to communicate what we mean because without them we end up adrift. At work we need clear words so we:

know what to do and how to do it

understand if we’re doing things correctly or not

remain motivated to keep growing

Words comes from outside and within, defining us and our world. Words have real, undeniable power.

Sometimes, though, we get ourselves in situations where we:

don’t know what to say

are caught off guard

forgot what we planned to say

don’t care about the issue or person

Of late, when people are caught short, they just say: “He or she or it was amazing.” (If you don’t believe me just listen to a talk show, the news, ads, an interview, your friends, or yourself. Consider counting the “amazings” in your day.)

Answers like “amazing” (or “This is crazy or nuts or awesome.”) are equally part of the workplace.

An amazing recovery

Empty words create malnourished communication. In a marketplace where you need to standout to be discovered, you need to speak and write using words that mean something.

When everything is said to be amazing, suddenly nothing is or can be. When everyone is amazing, nothing differentiates one from the other.

To believe that we are continually amazing becomes delusional. Praise words and laudatory phrases are wonderful. They become an issue when the words don’t come with context.

If I’m amazing at work, then in what ways do I astonish:

Do I get more accomplished in a day than my coworkers?

Do I produce fewer errors?

Have I achieved a standard of customer satisfaction performance that exceeds goals?

Do I work more calmly under stress than most?

No one performs at the top of their game all the time. So when you’re not creating wonder, you have skills and behaviors to work on. That’s how you grow and continue to raise the bar.

Amazing is rarefied air, breathed briefly under special conditions, so you must keep reaching.

Let’s fix this.

Words are power tools. Communication is enriched by those who use words to convey what they mean, not to fill space with empty sounds.

If you want to distinguish yourself, commit to using language that delivers insights, ideas, perspectives, viewpoints, and feedback clearly. I’ve stricken “amazing” from my vocabulary for now. I don’t want to sound like the echo of our times. Like you, I want to sound like myself.

If more supervisors followed it, fewer problems would develop on their watch. Sadly, most don’t.

Balancing acts.

Supervisors are busy. Some even overwhelmed.

They’re like the circus act where someone spins a plate on the end of a stick, puts it on his head, then takes two more sticks with plates and spins them in each hand.

No applause if the plates fall off…only sad sounding oohs from the crowd and maybe a boo from someone feeling mean.

Supervisors dread noise that doesn’t sound like attaboy or attagirl. Their job is to build a work group where employees keep lots of plates spinning, in spite of interruptions, faulty sticks, or a lapse in concentration.

Supervisors are continually on red alert for the material stuff that can disrupt performance:

Equipment needing repair

Technology flaws

Processes that break down

Cost overruns

They often see their job as running interference to avoid plates falling off sticks, when their most important job is to provide clear, consistent direction and behavioral standards to employees.

When employees know what is expected, they can do their best work. However, they don’t know if they’re meeting your expectations unless you tell them.

And you can’t tell them if you don’t pay attention to how they are working and acting. Or if you pull the covers over your head. (Crash go the plates!)

Everyone has something they feel the need to tell us at work. And we’re prone to reciprocate.

They may comment on:

Our attire, haircut, and interactive style

Organizational changes and the risks to us

The last presentation we made, data set developed, or marketing idea we created

The likelihood of our getting promoted or even downsized

We tend, at first, to take these comments at face value, as part of the background noise of work, until they strike a nerve.

Decoding messages

Workplace savvy is a measure of our ability to correctly decode what we hear and see.

What our colleagues tell us is important. Behind every comment there’s either support, caution, implied criticism, or an offer of help.

We tend to weigh feedback based on who’s giving it: our boss, a coworker we like or one we don’t, the department manager, the HR rep, a customer, or a project team leader.

Consider the following statements as if you were either a hearing them or making them. Each has a positive element but two have a potentially negative undercurrent.

Mary, your proposal for using social media to attract younger customers to our new product is a good one. Do you also plan to include messages that will connect with our long-time customers?

Criticism:If this is feedback from Mary’s boss, there’s a subtle criticism that her proposal missed a key customer segment.

Help: If it’s coming from a coworker, it could be considered helpful input to ensure the proposal’s success.

Jacob, I’ve successfully put together Power Point presentations for the VP in the past. Let me finish the one you’re working on to announce the reorganization.

Intrusion: This coworker is saying, “I know how to do this and you don’t. Give it to me, so I can be the agent of its success.” I’d be wary of the coworker’s next step which may be taking the credit and demeaning Jacob.

Paul, the last time there was a safety drill, I had the lead like you do now. Unfortunately, our department didn’t do too well. I learned a lot in the process, so if you’d like to talk over your plan, I’d be happy to share what I learned.

Help: Here the coworker is reaching out, offering to share her knowledge and experience so Paul can incorporate it into his plan.

Who’s giving the feedback, why , and how determine the way we take it.

I was inspired to write this post while outside spraying herbicide on the grass creeping through the stones on my driveway.

It was another hot, humid day with a forecast of periods of rain.

As I was spraying, an older man in a mid-sized, green pick up stopped in the street across from me.

With a smile and a friendly voice, he said that there was no sense spraying those weeds when more rain was just going to wash it off.

I’d never met this guy, although I’d been maintaining my farm property for over 25 years.

I told him that I’d had lots of experience killing weeds, the environmentally-friendly material I was using was commercial grade, and that the leaves would absorb it in about an hour. (My feedback to him.)

I too smiled and spoke in a friendly voice.

He smiled again, wished me a nice day, and drove off.

At first, I thought he was just trying to be helpful. Maybe he was.

Then I thought he was actually both critical (“How dumb is that woman using herbicide when it might rain?”) and intrusive (“I’d better stop her from wasting her time and money.”)

Anyway, I kept on spraying and the rain held off as I expected.

Stay savvy.

Things are rarely what they seem. Words have more layers than a chocolate torte. Making sure you understand what’s behind the feedback you receive and the feedback you give enhances your ability to navigate the challenging waters of your career.